


To Err

by hisboywriter



Category: Young Avengers
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-04
Updated: 2013-02-04
Packaged: 2017-11-28 04:19:08
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,293
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/670188
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hisboywriter/pseuds/hisboywriter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Teddy comes to terms with the change of events in his life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To Err

**-X-**

Teddy was not human.

 

It was a fact that had been easy to put in the back burner of his mind when an impending war loomed over the city; a whole life story, yanked out from under his feet, had seemed insignificant when the lives of thousands, possibly millions, hung in the balance.

Even after the two duped forces of power left Earth, his heritage remained a prick in the corner of his thought, overshadowed by scattering the ashes of the woman he had always called ‘Mom’. Though the urn was small, in that moment it was heavy, weighed down by grief. But there was no time to mourn, as a new villain threatened the city’s wellbeing and, yet again, Teddy’s personal dilemma had to take a backseat, fermenting.

Then, too quickly, he was welcomed into a remodeled home that was not his own. They understood—Mrs. Kaplan made sure of that—of how delicate the first weeks would be, especially the first night. Everyone tried their part to assure Teddy he was part of this family and showed him what was now his room, but it was never going to quite be  _his_  room.

“I um, magic-ed it up a little,” Billy said, lingering in the doorway, hand clinging to the doorknob. “Not much. I…didn’t know if it would be too much to make it too…similar to your old room.”

Somewhere deep inside of Teddy, he appreciated the awkward effort Billy put into making the transition easier. Everything else, those parts that were beginning to smolder, tuned out the mage and fixated on the terrifying truth that this was the bed he would sleep in every night, one that was not down the hall from his mother.

Teddy gripped tighter onto the bag that held what remained of his past life.

“Teddy?”

“Yeah,” he breathed out, blinking rapidly. He kept his back to Billy. “Thanks…”

“Teddy…”

He lowered the bag, stood beside the bed, and wondered what nightmares would descend on him tonight.

“Teddy, do you…I’m here, you know,” Billy was saying, “when you’re…ready to talk.”

The words hovered around Teddy, appending themselves to the dark cloud of his aura—a volatile mixture of thoughts and emotions that was, minute by minute, pressing down harder on him.

Teddy’s shoulders drooped, neck beginning to hurt.

“Okay, well…I’ll let you…to…right.” There was a soft shuffle and then the click of the door shutting.

The sound cracked the boulder of accumulated emotions, so much so that Teddy thought his knees would buckle. They didn’t, and he managed to sit down on the edge of the bed, staring at his hands.

Hands laced with a molecular construction he had no idea about.

Teddy clenched his hands, tried to anyway, but found himself too spent to even bother with that gesture as reality deteriorated around him. His mother, who was not really his mother, was gone. There were no more calls from her, no more scolding or praise, no one to bring up embarrassing memories of when he was a child.

And when he would wake up tomorrow, and the day after that and the day after that, she would still be gone.

That night, Teddy thought little of his alien blood. For the first time in a long while, he wept, and hoped only the pillow knew that he did it and how hard he had done it.

**-x**

When Billy shut the door, he sagged against its frame and clutched the knob with a grip that, were he Teddy, would snap. Lips pressed into a fine line, the debate within him waned, and he conceded to the understanding that Teddy needed space.

He shuffled away from the door, glancing back at it more than once. It was a burden of a fact to know no words could take the edge off whatever was infecting Teddy. More aggravating was the fact that words were Billy’s specialty and yet he could not bring Teddy the peace of mind he must have been craving.

Of course he couldn’t: he couldn’t even save Teddy’s mother.

Screwing his eyes tightly for a moment, Billy collected enough of his wits to steady himself, for Teddy’s sake. There was still the matter of his parents. Upon stepping back into the living room, he saw their wider-than-usual eyes and an expression that said they had a lot to talk about.

So, he talked. Talked until Billy staggered over his words and made dramatic gestures to try and express his apologies, for having hid his powers from them, for the gaping crater of a window his home no longer had, for the circumstances they found themselves in now.

His mother finally silenced his rambling by scooping him up into an embrace that, any other day, would have him flustered and wiggling for an escape. This time, it was second nature to sweep his arms around her and hold her. And he hated the uncoiling of guilt in his stomach, guilt from the fact that at least he still  _had_  his mother  _and_  father at the end of the day.

But even the assurance of their wellbeing couldn’t clear his mind and steer him in the proper direction in how to handle Teddy. Neither would he ask them directly what to do and they didn’t raise the touchy subject.

Billy decided he could merely stay handy, ready to help when and if he could, trailing after the blonde, ready to catch him when he fell.

When Teddy politely rejected the invitation to dinner, Billy knew the fall was coming. He barely ate—no one really did—and his bed felt foreign under him when he tucked in early for the night, as though it knew his heart and mind were too riddled with topics to bother with sleep, so he got up and dared to visit the room that he knew Teddy wasn’t adjusting to.

After convincing himself and going in for the knock, he heard a broken sound echo from beyond the door, one he couldn’t mistake. Heart plummeting, he reached for the knob instead and found the door locked.

“Teddy,” he whispered, flattening his palm against the door.

He swallowed the following words, knowing they would have come out loud enough to disrupt his boyfriend’s need of privacy. He poured his sympathy in that futile effort of touching the door, staying for what felt like an eternity before, with extreme will, he pulled away and treaded back to his room with a heavier heart.

**-x-**

An x amount of days trundled by, where night meshed into day or maybe it was day meshing into night. ‘X’ amount because Billy told Teddy that today was Sunday, meaning only a few days had passed since he arrived at the Kaplan home, but it equated to a month for him in the insomniac dread that had occurred since he first cried.

It was Sunday. He held onto that fact; facts grounded him in the whirlwind he had been flung into just days ago. He was also sitting on the bed he still couldn’t call his own. It was nothing like his bed back home.

 _Home_ , Teddy thought, and the word twisted in his mind, latching onto old memories and making it difficult to breathe.

“Teddy?”

Though it hurt, Teddy lifted his head to identify the presence beside him as Billy’s.

Billy smiled gently with his eyes. “I asked if you were sure you ate enough? I could bring you some more,” he said.

Teddy didn’t remember eating. He didn’t remember when Billy came into the room either, but it had been that way the past few days, where Billy seemed, each day, more and more like a ghost—a figment of his shambled mind.

Shaking his head, he glanced around the room, spotted his opened but still-packed bag, wishing his mind was as organized as its contents. His eyes fell back down, staring at his open palms.

He flexed each finger, pushed his fingertips into his palm, and almost extended a claw to see if, deep enough, his blood would be blue? Green?  It was just one of many nonsensical thoughts that sprung up a lot today (or was it yesterday?), now that they found a niche in the turbulence that was his psyche.

Before, all thoughts and emotions swarmed around the loss of his mother, and he had known it would only be a matter of time before the anger bubbled to the surface, the bewilderment, the denial, the bite that came from feeling you had been lied to your entire life.

A life he had been fond of, regardless of his troubles. A life filled with a mother who could make him feel like he didn’t need a father in the picture to complete his happiness.

“Teddy?”

Teddy felt more than saw Billy’s hand rest on his tense forearm. “My mom sold real-estate,” he said.

Billy’s hand gaze him a squeeze. “To support a son that she loved.”

“A son that wasn’t hers.”

Silence weighed down, but Teddy barely noticed it.

“I don’t doubt your birth mom loved you, Teddy,” Billy said quietly, and both hands came to rest on Teddy’s wrist. “But you were given two mothers,  _both_ who loved you very much. I believe that. You may have not met one of them and the other took the role, but…”

Teddy’s eyes flicked to the smaller hands juxtaposed to his larger, alien ones.

“But what I believe doesn’t matter,” Billy added. “What do  _you_  believe, Teddy?”

At that, memories unraveled from the fray of the storm and, unknowingly, Teddy chuckled through his nose.

“I remember,” he started, voice no better than a rasp, “every time I had a bad day, at school or whatever, she would put on some movies and make me kettle corn, which I was crazy about as a kid, and we’d stay up a little later than usual to watch all of them.”

Billy’s hands pressed into his claws, stroking each long, dangerous digit. “Teddy…”

Teddy lowered his head, more memories bursting out, and he felt his head grow incredibly hot. “I’d like some…to be alone right now.”

He heard a sound, maybe a protest being swallowed by Billy, but after a while, he heard the door click shut.

The room was silent, but inside Teddy it wasn’t. He got up, the world tilting to one side, and gripped the side of the dresser to balance himself. Once he lifted his head, he could ogle at his reflection in the mirror draped above the furniture. He saw a face unfamiliar to him, or maybe too familiar and not worthy of the human skin it wore.

He scowled at it, feeling the urge to change into anything, something that was more becoming of what he really was.

He breathed hard, steeled himself, and just as his skin prepared to shift, his reflection smirked at him, setting the storm loose. He almost cried out, tearing himself away from the doppelganger in the mirror, unaware of the dents his palms had made into the dresser, oblivious to the tremble overcoming him.

Rubbing his face, he moaned his dismay, flummoxed by how many thoughts he could have on his heritage alone. All of them, absurd or not, bounced around in his head, eating at him, telling him things he didn’t want to hear, having the audacity to insult the woman he had always thought was his mother, goading him to escape the façade that was ‘Theodore Teddy Altman’, accusing him of having no right to be a superhero.

“Shut up,” he told them all, pressing the heels of his claws into his eyes, but that did nothing to stop them. They were free now, pulsing through his veins, ringing in his ears, laughing at him, trying to make him scream or cry or a pathetic combination of the two.

With a shout, Teddy tore his hands away from his face, breath ragged as if he had run miles, and his eyes darted around.

They fixated on the window and without a second thought, he escaped through it.

**-x-**

Teddy was gone.

Billy groaned and ruffled his hair, arguments tumbling in his head, some supporting that he go after his boyfriend, others scolding him for not allowing him space. The detail that Teddy had wiggled away through the window, however, and not through the front door was enough to convince him to find where the blonde went.

And he didn’t have to invade any actual space, he figured. As long as he found Teddy unharmed, that was enough. With that thought, he cast a nervous glance at the door, shut it, and bathed himself in blue magic. His uniform replaced his nightwear and with a deep breath and prayer that his parents wouldn’t find out, he cast a locating spell—

—and manifested between heaps of junk, somewhere far from the usual city limits.

Billy’s eyes flicked around, startled. He ducked and took refuge behind a piece of rubble that might have once been a brick building.. It didn’t take long to spot the other lonely form in the expanse of ruin. Teddy stood many yards away, his back the most visible to Billy, and even from his hiding spot he noted the frayed streaks in Teddy’s sweater where his wings must have torn through.

 _Teddy_ , Billy thought, because he didn’t dare to say the name and disturb whatever silence Teddy needed to himself.

The blonde stood too still, facing a mountain of cinderblock. Billy saw the signs of his distress nonetheless. Hands balled into fists, spine stiff, legs rigid in a stance that otherwise would say he was prepared for battle.

Billy crawled closer and observed, repressing the impulse to dash after him.

It felt like an hour trickled by before, so slowly, one of Teddy’s hand rose.

Billy winced when Teddy’s fist struck the cinderblock and it rumbled in a loud protest. A heavy silence descended on them after that, as the fist remained lodged within the yawning hole, and just as Billy made to crane his neck for a better view, Teddy charged forward.

Teddy pummeled the cinderblocks, back lined with tension, fist after fist after fist, and Billy worried he’d manage to snap his bones or worse. The block cracked and splintered with each blow, quaking under the anger, the fear, the confusion, the agony that fueled Teddy’s tirade. Soon, Teddy’s grunts competed with the sound of cinder crumbling, the sounds escalating with every other punch until he gave a shout so fierce, so pained, that Billy’s skin nearly flew off.

With that terrible sound, Teddy’s form tore free of his human clothing, a massive green claw erupting forward, fisting, and then striking the object one last, hard time. It went flying into the side of a wilting building, exploding into smaller pieces.

Rags, remnants of Teddy’s clothes, fluttered around his heaving form, which gradually straightened to his full Hulkling height, and, for a stupid instant, Billy believed he had calmed down.

It took everything in him to stay lurking from a distance when Teddy rushed forward, his wings tearing free and slapping the air, increasing his speed. He dove into another mass of rubble, finishing it off in two blows, unleashing a bellow so raw and ferocious. A terrible scream Billy never wanted to hear again, but would remember for a lifetime in his nightmares.

Debris rained on Teddy and then his body lurched forward, driven by a force Billy knew came from somewhere deep within his boyfriend.

Teddy crumbled to his claws and knees, curling into himself. He stayed like that for minutes, the seconds dragging by nervously for Billy as he listened to the tremulous huffing and puffing of the fatigued boy’s breathing.

And then Teddy cried.

Not angry, tangled cries, the kind that Billy thought would punctuate such an aggressive outburst, but soft, shriveled noises that could barely be heard from where the mage watched. Teddy’s shoulders trembled, the tips of his wings shuddered from where they grazed the dirty ground, and one claw hid the tears Billy understood had to be there while the other claw clung to the earth as if holding on hard enough would reassure Teddy that he belonged on this planet.

Billy tore his gaze away from the scene, collapsing against the brick against his back. His heart pounded in his ears though he was sure it was breaking now. Even through the roar of his blood, he could still make out the sobs coming from Teddy.

Pulling a hand to his mouth, Billy muffled a shaky, sharp intake of breath. His eyes stung and he blinked hard to steady the blurring vision before he willed himself to look back, begging anyone, anything to tell him what to say, what to  _do_.

“Teddy,” he said, under a whisper.

His fingers ached to soothe the crinkles forming in Teddy’s face as much as his legs burned to sprint over and throw himself onto the other boy, privacy be damned.

He almost did just that, his feet shifting through the ground, but stopped when Teddy moved again. The blonde pushed off the ground, rearranging himself until he flopped on his back, limbs splayed around him without a care, eyes locked onto the sky.

He stared up for a while and eventually Billy glanced up too, searched for answers, received nothing. Somewhere out there, Teddy might be imagining his heritage, of the two worlds he was bred from. Or maybe he wondered about his mother, and if she went to a better place.

Billy shuddered, unable to fathom such a cruel thing happening to himself, and looked back at his boyfriend. Save for his heaving chest, he was as still as he had been violent moments ago, either spent for the night or simply having found no solace in the acts of demolishing. Then, one spiked, green arm lifted off the ground and hovered over Teddy’s face, flexing and stretching to mimic various skin tones, both human and nonhuman alike.

He seemed to study each change, and finally settled back to his human form, arm collapsing back to the dirt. There, exposed to the elements save for what remained of his tattered pants—now shorts—Teddy returned to whatever thoughts, pain, or sanctuary the speckled sky gave him.

And because he went so still and stared for so long, Billy lowered down to sit so he could stare at the same sky as long as Teddy needed to.

**-x-**

Too soon after, Teddy went to school.

Even after exerting himself to the bones with physical outlets or rotting in bed, his emotions had not been expended. They had left him, only to swell again and burn behind his eyes. Now, where he had been drowning in his own anger, and all the other feelings he still couldn’t label, he thought less of the past, which he knew he had no control over, and considered the present and future.

Especially regarding Billy.

The bell rung, signaling the rush was on to the next class, and Teddy worried little over rushing, instead repeating (though not quite accepting) the truth: he was not human.

Yet he walked among them. An auto-pilot that had switched on orchestrated his legs and lugged him to his locker. The herd of his schoolmates trampled along, some bumping or brushing against him, others casting him curious looks; the new student was easy to spot.

Those that did spot him or had been obligated to stare at him upon the teachers’ introducing him made him want to shrink his size, change just enough so that he was inconspicuous. On the heels of that thought was the reality that he could very well  _do_  that, and not because he was a mutant.

Keeping as low of a profile as he could, Teddy opened his assigned locker and switched books. This morning he was told, more than once, he could take time off from school. Maybe take a few weeks off. Each time he appreciated the suggestion and refused. The schoolwork would be there, regardless of his malaise, and equations and poems were a needed distraction, if only for a short while.

“Hey, Teddy,” a voice came from his right.

Teddy caught a friendly smile from the girl in his math class (first period) who had been especially kind to him. She turned up the light of her expression when she noticed him looking.

“Hey,” he said back, pulling out a shabby smile.

“I heard you have English with Mr. Davis next. Me too,” she said, smile growing. “We’re doing group work on a packet for Alexander Pope. Do you want to join my group? “

His smile softened, and it occurred to him that she, like others, had no inkling to what he really was, had no clue that he was mulling over his very existence.

“Yeah, sure,” he answered. “That’s really nice of you. Er, Adela, right?”

She seemed delighted he remembered her name. “Yep.” Her expression dropped a notch. “You okay?”

 “Um, yeah. Why do you ask?”

“No, nothing big. You looked kind of tired. But I guess that happens when you come in the middle of the school year,” she said around a chuckle.

Teddy didn’t have what it took to return the sound, especially when his eyes spotted Billy weaving through the swarm of students, headed right for him. Growing tense, Teddy felt his stomach drop into his shoes and before he processed it, he was shutting his locker hard.

“Let’s go then. Lead the way for me? I don’t remember the class,” he told her in a rush, hoping the class wasn’t the way Billy was coming from—and he felt a sickening twist in his gut for wanting to avoid his boyfriend.

Adela blinked but recovered with a new smile, guiding Teddy in the opposite direction thankfully. “This way. It’s just in the building across from here.”

Teddy nodded, doing his best to listen to her going on about the teacher when his mind was too centered on Billy.

At lunch, Teddy didn’t sit with him.

**-x-**

Teddy acted like nothing was amiss as they walked home.

Billy knew all too well that his boyfriend carried emotions deep inside, never so much as allowing them to reach out and make him snap out at someone like Billy would. It was difficult to resist the need to shiver at the memory of Teddy falling apart like the very wreckage he had destroyed.

Pulling away from the vivid images, Billy examined the other boy as best he could without seeming obvious. Teddy’s thinking seemed to be at its deepest now that he had stepped out of the halls, his auto-pilot off; his eyebrows weighed down over his eyes, his jaw periodically clenched, and his feet all but dragged along the sidewalk.

Teddy had once told him that coexisting as a mutant had pushed a weight down on his shoulders, a constant pressure that reminded Teddy to be wary because he was different, but now that weight had a new life of its own, afflicting other parts of him. And Billy saw it all unfold before his eyes.

It was made all the worst because Teddy walked alongside him, discussing school and other topics as though there wasn’t a grave subject for debate lingering beneath. Billy suspected Teddy knew he wasn’t fooling anybody though, even if he didn’t realize Billy had always been there watching out for him during those private paroxysms of emotion.

At a street light, Billy’s heart couldn’t take anymore, unable to shake off the sound of his boyfriend yelling and crying, and he interrupted Teddy with: “Hey, why don’t we go for some pizza?”

Teddy looked at him with a frown. “Huh? You mean…right now?”

Billy shrugged one shoulder and stuffed his hands into his jacket’s pockets, more to conceal his nervous fingers than anything else. “Well, you said you didn’t get to eat lunch because you wanted to catch up on the study guide for English, right?” he asked, aware that that given excuse had been a lie.  

The red hand across the street flickered to a walking figure and Teddy flicked his eyes to it, licking his lips. “Well,” he trailed off, eventually focusing his attention back on Billy. “Yeah…okay. That sounds…”

“Nice?” Billy offered, mouth twitching. He couldn’t find it in him to smile fully.

“Yeah. That sounds nice.”

**-x-**

Teddy didn’t touch his pizza so much as he picked at the pineapples piled on it.

He sat across from Billy in a booth at one of their favorite joints; their second date was here, actually, and he didn’t realize he almost smiled at the memory.

“So,” Billy began, pulling Teddy out of his tangled thoughts. The mage’s expression was open, both eyebrows drawn up. “Not hungry, I take it.”

Teddy blinked slowly and found it easier to lower his eyes than confront the looming subject matter.

It was a topic that unnerved him the most, that dreadful question of what _Billy_ , let alone himself, thought of his newfound heritage. Today, as he had done yesterday, and the day before that, he wondered over it, never summoning the gall to ask Billy. It was better to swim through the cocktail of his emotions and thoughts, better to identify how he felt about everything first and what it meant before he pulled Billy into the mix.

Or so that’s what he told himself.

“Well, I’m dating an alien,” Billy said, “and that sounds weird, doesn’t it?”

The words twisted Teddy’s entire digestive tract and his head whipped up. “What?”

Billy offered a half-smile. “It’s bothering you.”

Teddy grimaced. “That obvious?”

“Maybe. Maybe not. I think you’re forgetting that I’m your boyfriend and notice these things.”

Teddy blinked again, then shook off the shock so he could focus on the fact that Billy used present tense. “Billy,” he hesitated, “I’m not sure how…”

Billy nodded at him. “You can say it, Teddy.” He pressed his lips together for a moment. “Rather, you should say it. You know…just…let it out. Anything. That’s what I’m here for when you need it or—”

“I’m sorry.”

“Huh?” Billy’s face scrunched up, head tilting. “Did you…just apologize?”

Teddy exhaled hard, the action not bringing him any relief, and he rested his hands flat on the cold tabletop. “I…know I’ve not been…around,” he started, and realized that didn’t come out as articulated as he hoped.

He thought Billy would interrupt him, call him out for acting ridiculous, but his boyfriend only studied him, food forgotten.

This was it.

Swallowing, Teddy leaned forward and asked the question that had been plaguing him. “Do you want to break up?” Then, terrified of the answer, he blurted out, “I know it can’t be an easy idea. I get it. To date a guy who turns out to not be human. A half-breed even. A mix of two worlds that are constantly at war, more so now maybe because they both want me.”

He pinched his eyes shut and forced himself not to delve back into the thoughts of who his father was, who his biological mother was and the resulting madness from their union. He tried again, saying, “I always thought I was a mutant.”

“Teddy?”

Teddy lifted his head, his neck aching when he did. The smile Billy wore reminded him he was holding his breath, and he breathed out.

“Would you think me differently if I lost all my abilities?”

“What?” Teddy stared and shook his head. “No, of course not.”

Billy hummed, nodded, and picked a piece of pepperoni. “My magic is just one small part of who I am,” he said, popping the little delight into his mouth. Then, he picked up the entire slice of pizza. “But even without it, I don’t think it takes away from the whole experience of who I am. Don’t you think?”

Teddy watched him take a bite, feeling his lips working out a smile. A feeble smile, but one nonetheless.

“It’s different,” Billy added, “don’t get me wrong. I’m not trying to say everything is perfect and life goes on like nothing changed. But, Teddy, you’re still  _Teddy_  to me, alien, human, mutant, whatever. Different isn’t bad. What’s normal is relative, right? I think we of all people would know that.”

Teddy pooled his hands into his lap, heart pattering like it might soar out of his chest any moment. “Are you trying to say I over-think as much as you do?”

Billy broke into a chuckle and shrugged. “I understand that…it’s not easy to learn what you thought about yourself is actually…different. But, like I said, it’s just different and both humans and aliens I’m sure get moments where they feel their whole world has changed. And that’s okay.

“You just take it a day at a time and know you aren’t worse because something is different. It might change how you see some things, but you’re still a fanboy who I had a crush on the moment I saw you. You’re  _my_ fanboy.”

Billy paused, head down and cheeks suffused with pink. Then he added, “If that makes sense.”

The burn in Teddy’s stomach and all the pricks and unease that had made themselves habitats in his body, heart, and mind lifted just a little. They didn’t vanish, not so easily, but Teddy knew right then the smile he gave Billy was far more genuine than the one he’d given the girl from his class, than any smile he had shared in what seemed like a long time.

“I like being your fanboy,” he said.

The pink tingeing Billy’s nose and cheeks brightened. Teddy felt a light bump on his leg and upon realizing Billy’s leg was the culprit, nudged his leg back until it leaned against his boyfriend’s.

“Good,” Billy said, “because I like you. A lot. That’s not going to change just like that because you’re really not from this world.” A sheepish look. “You’re part of  _my_  world. I’ll help you in any way I can. That’s what matters, and I’d like you to stick around for a long, long time. And if you ask me, the term ‘human’ is relative too, not just bound by your biology. So there.”

Unable to resist, Teddy laughed at that, the dry sound a testament to how long it had been since he had last indulged in one. His appetite returned with vigor and he lifted his food, taking a bite just as Billy took another out of his own slice.  

“And,” Teddy said after swallowing.

“And?”

A coy pause. “I’m not planning to lock the door to the room tonight,” he said.

Billy grinned.

They walked home shoulder-to-shoulder after that and, late that night, amidst the throes of impending nightmares, Teddy found a piece of tranquility in his boyfriend’s arms.

**-x-**

There was no tombstone for his mother.

Teddy stood at the site where he had scattered her remains. It was chilly and he welcomed the bite of the cold as he surveyed the area. It was still, void of other passersby, and even the distant hum of the city sounded far away.

A gentle touch rested on his back.

“No rush. I’ll wait for you over there,” Billy said, smiling, and gesturing with his chin. He brought his hand to Teddy’s face, replicating the moment right before Teddy had let the breeze take his mother’s ashes so many days ago.

Teddy leaned his forehead against Billy’s, giving a faint nod before the mage peeled away, allowing him privacy.

The last few days, weeks really, were as much of a mangled memory as his thinking had been during that time. Teddy knew he was far from feeling stable. Maybe he never could stop dreaming about his heritage or dead mother or the multitude of questions he still had, but today he noticed how fresh the air was when he sucked it into the bottom of his lungs.

At last he tilted his head up to the skies.

“Hey, Mom,” he said.

That’s what he still called her.  Often he thought of labeling her as something else—caretaker, a guardian, since she technically was all those things— yet, in the end, he could not think to call her anything but what she had been to him.

Here, there was never an auto-pilot. In this quiet spot Teddy could think of his mother until his eyes burned and throat clogged up. Grappling with the truth of his heritage was a troubling step in life he knew he’d have to overcome, but the loss of the woman who ended up not being a woman at all, but an alien that was also not his biological mother, was a monster on its own that still made him wish this was all a dream gone wrong.

Where he had woken up early to make her breakfast on a Saturday morning or where he had prepared a dinner for them to share when she got home from work, there were now awkward adjustments in the Kaplan home. Where he would receive texts from her while he was out asking if he needed to be picked up or something equally lighthearted, was now a cell phone number he could call, but would get no one on the other end.

Teddy flipped open his phone and scrolled through her texts, unable to let the last pieces of her affection go. Sometimes, during his aching for her, he debated calling the number again and clung to that piece of hope that she’d somehow pick up and answer his questions.

“I had a lot to ask you,” he said to the ‘Mom’ on his phone. Hearing himself say it lodged up his throat and he cleared it a few times before stuffing the phone back into his pocket. “I wouldn’t know what to even ask…where to start.”

More than that, he wondered what she would say. He had constructed dozens of scenarios of what she could say, even if they hurt him, but ultimately, all he still had were questions and more questions.

“Um,” he went on, wiping his eyes with the back of his sleeve, “anyway, I just…haven’t been here in a while so I just…you know, thought I should…update you. Things like that. I, ah, I’m at Billy’s school now. Doing well, I guess. I’m thinking of joining the basketball team.

“Mrs. Kaplan thinks it might be good to have an activity. She’s been great to me, all of them, even the kids. You always did like them. They’ve been…really great to me. Billy too. He just…I wish I could have told you about him. How special he is to me.”

He broke off in a weak laugh, suddenly bombarded with an embarrassing memory.

_“What are you so giddy about?” his mother asked him. “And why did you change your clothes again?”_

_Teddy smoothed down the front of his button down, fighting back a blush. “I’m not giddy. It’s just nice to hang out with someone who’s into comics as much as I am. Does this shirt look weird on me?”_

_“Why would it look weird?” she asked, giving him a clever smile that told him he could never outwit her. She approached him and adjusted his collar. “You look absolutely handsome.”_

_“Mom…”_

_“I know. It doesn’t count if your mom says it,” she said for him, rolling her eyes. She stepped back and examined his attire. “Still, handsome. And, you know, you could bring this Billy over for dinner sometime.”_

_“Mom!”_

Teddy laughed harder, scrubbing his face as he did so. “But I guess you already knew,” he said, sighing heavily when the last of the laughter left him. “And I just wanted  _you_  to know…that I’m not mad. I mean, I am mad. I’m really mad sometimes. But not at you. I don’t know how hard it was for you to do what you had to do, and I don’t think I’ll ever really understand it but…if you ever did feel bad about it, I want you to know I don’t blame you, and…”

He took in the silence, replayed a few memories of her in his mind.

“I miss you, Mom. So much.”

He scanned the skies, straining his ears, but only picked up the low whistle of the wind.

He took in another deep breath, letting his eyes shut as he did so. When he opened them, he knew they were wet. “I love you,” he said, and, with a final look at the clouds, turned away and made for the exit.

The answers to his questions might never come and he decided he would make the best of that because, if nothing else, Teddy would never doubt his love for the woman he knew to be, and would always call Mom, and the love that she had given him in their short time together.

As he spotted Billy waving at him from the entrance, a muffled part of him thought why he had submerged himself into his fears when he should have reached out to those that made it clear they cared about him. Or maybe it wasn’t wrong, but a necessary part of his growth, needing to shoulder the boulder that was his own musings until he could make some sense of it. Or maybe there was some middle ground he hadn’t known existed.

In the end, he figured it didn’t matter if he was mistaken in one way or another.

After all, to err was human.

**-X-**


End file.
